Microsoft deploys five security patches for upcoming Patch Tuesday

Microsoft will be rolling out five security patches on its next “Patch Tuesday” which is scheduled to arrive on March 11th. These security updates are said to fix several things, including the vulnerability in Internet Explorer which hackers have been exploiting since January. Two of the five security updates are categorized as “critical”.

Four security update are supposed to affect Windows XP users. The thirteen year old operating will stop receiving security updates from Microsoft come April 8th. After next week’s Patch Tuesday, Microsoft will have just one more update left for the desktop operating system, which is still being utilized by roughly 30 percent of the planet’s users.

Among the two updates which are marked as ‘critical’, one will affect all versions of IE, including the new IE 11. This security update will also resolve the vulnerability FireEye, a security firm, had found last month. The said vulnerability was circumventing Windows’ critical anti-exploitation technologies ASLR (Address Space Layout Randomization) using Flash ActionScript which is used by various websites to run content with the Flash player.

That’s not all. The other critical update, which also concerns Windows XP, will resolve a breach that was allowing attackers to gain access to other systems. The fifth update will fix things for Silverlight 5, Microsoft’s multimedia player plug-in.